Enabling multiplayer games

This turned out to be trickier. If you don't have DirectPlay support, you'll get errors like:err:dplay:DP_InitializeDPSP DP SP Initialization failed: DPERR_UNSUPPORTED as soon as you start doing anything network related. Most of the info I got from this page on DirectPlay. The winetricks script didn't work for me.

If you're connecting to the Internet through a router, you'll have to open the same ports there. You can typically access your router at http://192.168.1.1 or at http://192.168.1.254 (and/or https:).

To give you an idea, the steps for a BT Home Hub:

select "Settings" and type the administrator password

click "Advanced Settings", then "Continue to Advanced Settings"

click "Application Sharing", then "Supported Applications"

click "Add new game or Application"

for the name, you could enter "DirectPlay" (or "CMR2", you choose :-)

At "Copy an existing game/application" select "No"

Now enter the same port ranges as listed above (so the range 2300-2400, and single ports 47624 and 6073), with separate entries for TCP and UDP. You can leave "Trigger Port" empty

when done, click "Configuration", and assign the new ruleset to your PC

Running CMR2

By searching Google for something like "colin mcrae rally no cd" you can find a modified version of cmr2.exe that doesn't require you to keep the CD ROM in the drive.

As the Windows version (run winecfg, then the "Applications" tab) I have "Windows 2000" selected. My guess is XP will work too.

When I run CMR2 fullscreen under Wine, it doesn't respond to key presses. It does in windowed mode: run winecfg, select the "Graphics" tab, and enable "Emulate a virtual desktop". I have the dimensions at 1280x1024, although CMR2 does switch back to 640x480 (in the Graphics options you can later increase it).

For a good frame rate on my relatively old GeForce4 Ti 4200, I had to turn off Environment mapping, Shadow mapping, and Mip mapping (in the advanced graphics options). Still, with the draw distance at 6, all detail levels set to "high", and a 1024x768x16 window, the game managed between 20 fps (with 5 other cars nearby) and 50 fps (with no cars nearby).

When hosting a network game, for some reason when selecting the "Host" menu option, the game image moves to the bottom left. You can see it again by maximizing the wine window. Let me know if you find a fix for this. The network game does work though :-)

Sound

Sound works fine if you have Alsa selected as your output driver (winecfg, Audio tab), except when running a networked game (!). Then I got the error:ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:996:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave and:fixme:dsalsa:IDsDriverImpl_Open Failed to open device: Device or resource busy (wine 1.1.9) or:err:wave:wodOpen Error open: Device or resource busy (wine 1.1.29)

After messing forever with dmix, my ~/.asoundrc file, pulseaudio, etc., I found that changing the output driver to OSS made it work...